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Life After the Oil Crash

November 22, 2010

Is it really time to sell the house and buy a Prius? "Peak Oil" guru offers advice in "The Definitive Guide to the Coming Energy Fiasco." Everybody knows there’s a limited amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth. That means there’s a point at which the supply of that oil will be at its peak—a point after which oil supplies will spiral into a terminal phase of decline if we keep consuming at our current rate and even faster when you factor in China and India, countries that are beginning to consume at a rate closer to the U.S.

“Peak oil” is more than just an environmental issue. The world’s entire transportation, agricultural, and industrial systems have come to rely on the relative low cost and high availability of easy-to-mine oil. So what happens when all that cheap oil begins to dry up? Nothing short of a global, economic collapse and the end of life as we know it, say the “peak oil” theorists.

And there’s evidence to suggest we’re already there:

At the same time oil companies are dumping more money and manpower into mining initiatives that involve harder-to-reach-oil (see off-shore drilling), there has been great increasing investment in alternative fuel technology. According to the company’s website, Shell Oil expects to produce more natural gas than oil beginning in 2012. Experts say these are all hard indicators that every major oil company knows what is coming.

In October, at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA conference, “peak oil” guru Robert Hirsch warned that it’s time to adjust your lifestyle and your portfolio.

A report in this month’s online Business Insider sums up Hirsch’s advice:

“Sell most stocks. Get out of bonds. Buy annuities and gold. Move closer to public transit and shopping centers, and get a Prius.”